Where'd You Park Your Spaceship?, page 43
WHEN A DOG TAKES A BATH?
I can’t see her.
I assume I’m turned in the right direction.
I DON’T KNOW-I HAVEN’T EVER SEEN A DOG TAKE A
BATH!
That’s odd. YOU HAVEN’T? DO THEY NOT HAVE DOGS
THAT TAKE BATHS WHERE YOU COME FROM?
She lowers her voice. Heen-why are you yelling?
Because you were yelling-
That’s because you were-
I was yelling because this smell makes me want to yell.
Fair enough she responds, like this is a perfectly normal
every day interaction between two well-adjusted adults.
Another sliding, grinding sound.
Do you hear that? I ask her.
I do, it’s coming from the same place as before-
What should I do?
I have no idea-is it still in your eyes?
It is. I can’t see a thing!
And then it dumps.
Again. Even more.
Water this time.
So much of it.
I look up and open my eyes as the RED WHATEVER IT IS
rinses off me.
The water keeps coming.
I’m getting drenched.
The smell subsides.
A little.
It slows to a trickle.
A few drops.
And then it stops.
I look down.
There’s a drain in the floor.
The water is gone.
There’s a little red here and there, but otherwise it drained
as well.
I can see.
I step toward Noon Yeah.
Hold up she says. That smell.
Right. I’ll stay away.
She looks up at the trough.
Didn’t see that coming, did you?
A laugh.
We turn.
Piddle, piddle, piddle.
Dill Tudd stands there in the opening, smiling.
Like we do this all the time.
Piddle, piddle, piddle is RIGHT! I say.
I turn to Noon Yeah. She puts up her hands. You’ll get no
piddle from me-that’s between you two.
Dill Tudd starts to walk in a circle around me.
He looks up.
That BOOBY did some TRAPPIN’ he says.
Noon Yeah lights up. HE IS THE BOOBY TRAPPIN’
TYPE!!!
Dill Tudd is still circling me. There is the BOOBY, and then
there is the TRAP, and then there is that wonderful
moment when they come together-
He claps his hands once. Loudly. He’s perplexed by
something.
Although, seeing as we’re among friends here, I must be
honest and confess that it is a bit of a letdown.
I have no idea what to make of this. Letdown?
He sniffs the air around me. I realize in this moment that I
don’t know what I was hoping for. Interesting how that
works-you have a thing in your MIND and so you plan it
and you arrange it and you engineer it and then the day
comes when it happens. But it isn’t what you had
IMAGINED. So you ask yourself WHAT DID I IMAGINE?
And you have no answer for yourself. This is the elusive
power that a FIRST can have over you…
Noon Yeah is as bewildered as I am. A first?
Dill Tudd nods. Yes. First. You two are the first.
I look up at the trough. You haven’t BOOBY TRAPPED
anyone before this?
A look of recognition in Noon Yeah’s eyes. She steps out
of the doorway. Dill Tudd, are we the first to follow you here?
I’m thinking THERE’S NO WAY WE ARE when Dill Tudd
answers her
Yes. You are.
I point back down the tunnel.
No one has ever followed you here?
No one.
We’re the first?
You’re the first.
Noon Yeah crouches down and dabs her finger in one of
the last swirls of red. What was that?
Dill Tudd is so proud of whatever he’s about to say. Ahhhh
yes, an advanced aromatic achievement, finely tuned over
the laps by yours truly.
I blink, I’m still getting the water and whatever it was out
of my eyes. It was so red-like the reddest red I’ve ever
seen…
LIKE THE RED OF LIFE. He stretches it out slowly.
Wait.
No.
No Dill Tudd I say. Desperation in my voice.
Oh yes, Dill Tudd says, THE RED OF LIFE. Also known in
popular parlance as BLOOD.
Noon Yeah does that throaty laugh she did the first time
she appeared in my room. Heen got drenched in
blood???? OHHHHH THAT. IS. CLASSIC.
Dill Tudd nods vigorously. And not just any blood. Our dear
Gloria-
HUMAN BLOOD!??!! I get this full body itchy scratchy
feeling.
Oh dear no…Gloria was with us for thirteen laps. And
then she joined the soil just recently. I was so sad to see
her go. I sang a number of songs at her burial service.
I have to know. Gloria was a…?
Pig.
I knew Noon Yeah would have asked if I didn’t.
You had a funeral for a pig?
Oh Heen Gru-Bares-your questions are so often laced
with a certain innocence. It’s quite wonderful to behold.
He leans against the wall. Of course we had a funeral. WE
ALWAYS MARK OUR LOSSES PROPERLY. Grief
unexpressed will cause your bones to waste away.
I feel no need to say anything after that.
Noon Yeah does. WE?
Dill Tudd nods. WE.
I’m assuming she was looking for more information than
that. But that’s all he’s giving right now.
I get another whiff. Of myself.
What about this smell? Does this come from Gloria?
Oh Heen, you swim in the same sea of curiosity that Noon
Yeah does! Gloria is not the author of that aroma, pigs
don’t smell. Is that not common knowledge?
I’m thinking about pigs.
Huh. I don’t know anything about pigs. What are they for?
Dill Tudd considers this. Friendship. That’s what he says.
Which made her death all the more painful, didn’t it? Noon
Yeah asks.
So true.
There’s a wistful look on his face.
Thirteen laps is a good, long friendship she says, like
she knows exactly what she’s talking about.
I wait a beat.
So what about the smell? I have to know what that was.
Oh yes-I almost forgot. He pauses. Fox.
Noon Yeah laughs. Fox?
Who knew? Dill Tudd throws his hands up in the air. Of all
the nefarious odors that flow from the various orifices of
our fine friends of the fur, no pheromone out performs the
urine of a fox-
My turn. Fox?
Dill Tudd is so into this. Something unique about their
ANAL SACS produces a TANGY MUSKY SKUNKY aroma-
of course the compound variations with those particular
methyl sulfides will scorch your nasal hairs on their own-
Noon Yeah interrupts You’re telling me!
I look at her. What do you know about METHYL
SULFIDES?
She gives me a triumphant look. VULPINE SOCIETY at it’s
finest.
Dull Tudd nods approvingly. You sure know your sapient
mammals…
I do she says, like this is just another day on the job.
I shiver.
Let’s get you some dry clothes.
Dill Tudd says this as he heads through the opening.
We follow.
It’s a narrow path, with a natural hedge on our right and a
steep rock incline on the left.
Dill Tudd stops and turns to me. He holds up three fingers.
The third ingredient in my BOOBY BREW? Possum dung.
Noon Yeah claps. WHOO! BOOBY BREW!!!
I have a question. What is it about possum dung?
Dill Tudd beams. I thought you’d never ask. It’s the
VISCOSITY of it-not too thick, not too runny. A bit like
paste, but without the adhesive properties. It gives the
BOOBY BREW the perfect consistency. Plus, I thoroughly
enjoy how POSSUM DUNG rolls off the tongue.
I can think of absolutely nothing to say in response to this.
Noon Yeah, once again, does not have the same problem.
We’re sorry to barge in on you like this.
Dill Tudd pulls a leaf off a nearby branch and takes a bite.
There has been no BARGING that I am aware of!!! You
arrived in the due course of time.
Little alarms going off, somewhere within me.
You knew we were coming?
He thinks about this.
There are a number of answers to that question. And a
number of questions for that answer.
That is Dill Tudd right there: Sincerely answering my
question in such a way as to say everything and nothing,
all at the same time.
I shiver, again.
How about this? Dill Tudd says. Let’s get Heen those dry
clothes and then we’ll have a proper chat about the things
that matter most.
He continues down the trail.
Again, I lose all sense of distance.
We come to an opening in the path.
We’re in a small grove of trees, on the side of a hill.
There are wool blankets, about the size of a person,
hanging on a series of hooks drilled into the trunk of one
of the trees. I still can’t tell where we are, or how high up
we are, or what’s above us or below us-my topographical
awareness is thoroughly scrambled.
Dill Tudd hands us each a blanket. He takes one for
himself, and steps between two trees.
There’s a-what is it? What is that-a platform?
He sets his blanket down on it.
I step forward.
It slopes down into the woods below us.
It’s a slide?
It’s made of smooth metal-or is that fiberglass?
Noon Yeah steps next to me. Incredible.
She turns to Dill Tudd. Are you going down that?
Dill Tudd sits on the blanket.
Let us reconvene at the bottom…
He pushes off.
Away he goes.
It IS a slide.
And it is really, really long.
Trees bend their branches over it, forming a tunnel of
leaves.
We can’t see the bottom.
He disappears from view.
Noon Yeah sets her blanket down.
I ALWAYS GET THE JOB DONE.
She pushes off. She turns and smiles as she slides away.
I drop mine down and yell after her
YOU MESSED WITH THE WRONG SERIES 5.
If you had told me after talking to Dill Tudd those first few
times that this grown man in the matching outfit has a
SLIDE I assume I would have replied OF COURSE HE
DOES.
I haven’t been on a slide since I was a kid.
This one is so fast.
It banks to the right.
It curves to the left.
Under the trees I glide.
The slide flattens out, then drops down again, steeper.
More trees.
More leaves.
Stumps, rocks, branches.
A rabbit.
I fly by.
I see the bottom.
Noon Yeah is sprawled out on the ground.
The woods spit me out into a clearing next to her.
She jumps to her feet. WOOOOOOO! I LOVED THAT!
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU DID THAT?
I have no idea. Thirty laps ago, maybe?
She shakes her head. WHO KNEW?
She looks around.
I do, too.
I have been all over the galaxies.
I have hiked and explored and strolled through every sort
of terrain known to humans.
But this.
What I see.
This is new.
We’re in a valley, I think.
But it’s curved.
More like a circle.
Or a crater.
A crater?
It’s slightly longer than it is wide.
We’re at the bottom.
It rises up around us on all sides.
Along the top of the rim are those jagged teeth-like-rocks- that-are-actually-cliffs we saw from the other side as we
approached.
There are trees and plants in every direction, as far as I
can see. The crater is full of them. Avocados, oranges,
lemons-there’s something red growing on a plant to my
left, a clump of green stalks with bright purple stems to
my right. A large cactus is straight ahead. With a yellow
flower next to it. Next to that…hold on-are those
tomatoes?
It’s way, way too much to take in all at once.
Who did this?
WHAT is this?
How did all it all get here?
How would anyone ever even know this is here?
Noon Yeah leans on me.
It’s sooooo beautiful.
She says this as though the beauty is also crushing her in
the process.
I feel the same way.
It’s so beautiful it’s kind of heartbreaking-
In the best way. She speaks in a sound softer than breath.
And the smell. It’s like every flower and candle and scent
and oil and fragrance you’ve ever encountered,
overwhelming your olfactory awareness all at once. I
swear I’m getting some sort of ineffable high just standing
here NOTICING.
It’s its own little world. Noon Yeah states this delicately as
she tenderly rests her head on my shoulder. It's its own
little Dill Tudd world.
There are tears streaming down her face.
There she is.
There’s Noon Yeah.
Right there.
I feel like I’m finally seeing her.
I think the kids will enjoy that.
I look over.
Dill Tudd has been standing to our left this whole time,
watching us take in this scene. He has a look on his face I
haven’t seen before.
Satisfaction?
It’s more than that.
Pride?
A little.
Joy?
For sure.
But a little ache.
Sadness, even.
Like something he has wanted to happen is happening.
That’s what I sense.
At that same time something else is happening.
Something inevitable.
And he’s trying to sort it all out in his heart.
But these sorts of things-what do I know about these?
Kids? I ask him.
The slide-I think kids would really enjoy that slide.
He points to it.
I enjoyed it! Have kids ever tried it?
He shakes his head.
You’re the first-
Oh… I realize he was serious back there. Dill Tudd, are we
the FIRST people to ever visit you here and ride down
your slide?
He bites his lower lip.
He nods. Slightly.
What is that on his face?
Dill Tudd, is this overwhelming, having us here?
My question is utterly sincere.
I would never have asked someone a question like this.
I wouldn’t even have thought it.
I wouldn’t have been aware.
Noon Yeah leaves my side and walks over to him.
She puts both hands on his shoulders.
Is this your home?
He puts his hands on his heart.
It is. Welcome.
She hugs him.
He lives here?
He leaves this place and walks into the CENTERS?
How long has he lived here?
Is it just him?
Does he live here alone?
I stop the questions.
Because this is my pattern.
I start to feel and then I step back and I ANALYZE and
OBSERVE and NOTICE so I won’t have to feel whatever it
is in it’s fullness, and I won’t be at the mercy of wherever
it may take me…
I cease the inquiries.
I don’t want to stand at a distance.
I walk over and embrace them both.
A GROUP HUG, I believe it’s called.
My first one ever.
BRRRRRR says Noon Yeah, laughing.
She backs up. You’re so cold.
Our Heen is a wet one Dill Tudd says as he turns and
walks away. Let’s get you sorted. We set off towards the
center of the crater, weaving in among the trees and
plants and bushes.
It’s like strolling through a slow motion explosion of life.
As if all these plants didn’t just grow, they BURST up out
of the soil because it couldn’t contain them.
Like Firdus had so much to say it just couldn’t hold its
tongue.
Up ahead to the left we see a building with a sloped roof.
Wait.
The roof.
That’s a wing.
The roof is a wing.
It’s resting on large wooden posts.
There aren’t any walls.
As we get closer I see long tables, stacked with piles of
fabric, lined up with space to walk in among them. There are scissors and tape measures and pins and patterns scattered around. Two of the tables have sewing machines on them.
Dill Tudd walks over to one of the tables and takes a shirt
off a pile.
He holds it up.
This should work.
The shirt is blue.
That jacket you made me fits perfectly I tell him.
He nods as though this is not news to him. Fit is a great
gift, is it not? WHEN SOMETHING FITS RIGHT IT FEELS
